Part 31 (1/2)

CHAPTER XVIII

Audrey was frightened. She did not care a penny's worth what her little world thought. Indeed, she knew that she had given it a new thrill and so had won its enthusiastic approval. She was afraid of what Clayton would think.

She was absurdly quiet and virtuous all the next day, gathered out her stockings and mended them; began a personal expenditure account for the New-year, heading it carefully with ”darning silk, 50 cents”; wrote a long letter to Chris, and--listened for the telephone. If only he would call her, so she could explain. Still, what could she explain? She had done it. It was water over the dam--and it is no fault of Audrey's that she would probably have spelled it ”d.a.m.n.”

By noon she was fairly abject. She did not a.n.a.lyze her own anxiety, or why the recollection of her escapade, which would a short time before have filled her with a sort of unholy joy, now turned her sick and trembling.

Then, in the middle of the afternoon, Clay called her up. She gasped a little when she heard his voice.

”I wanted to tell you, Audrey,” he said, ”that we can probably use the girl you spoke about, rather soon.”

”Very well. Thank you. Is--wasn't there something else, too?”

”Something else?”

”You are angry, aren't you?”

He hesitated.

”Surprised. Not angry. I haven't any possible right to be angry.”

”Will you come up and let me tell you about it, Clay?”

”I don't see how that will help any.”

”It will help me.”

He laughed at that; her new humility was so unlike her.

”Why, of course I'll come, Audrey,” he said, and as he rang off he was happier than he had been all day.

He was coming. Audrey moved around the little room, adjusting chairs, rearranging the flowers that had poured in on New-year's day, brus.h.i.+ng the hearth. And as she worked she whistled. He would be getting into the car now. He would be so far on his way. He would be almost there. She ran into her bedroom and powdered her nose, with her lips puckered, still whistling, and her heart singing.

But he scolded her thoroughly at first.

”Why on earth did you do it,” he finished. ”I still can't understand.

I see you one day, gravity itself, a serious young woman--as you are to-day. And then I hear--it isn't like you, Audrey.”

”Oh yes, it is. It's exactly like me. Like one me. There are others, of course.”

She told him then, making pitiful confession of her own pride and her anxiety to spare Chris's name.

”I couldn't bear to have them suspect he had gone to the war because of a girl. Whatever he ran away from, Clay, he's doing all right now.”

He listened gravely, with, toward the end, a jealousy he would not have acknowledged even to himself. Was it possible that she still loved Chris? Might she not, after the fas.h.i.+on of women, be building a new and idealized Chris, now that he had gone to war, out of his very common clay?

”He has done splendidly,” he agreed.

Again the warmth and coziness of the little room enveloped him. Audrey's low huskily sweet voice, her quick smile, her new and unaccustomed humility, and the odd sense of her understanding, comforted him. She made her indefinite appeal to the best that was in him.